Genre and Style in the works of George William MacArthur Reynolds (1814-79) (original) (raw)

Introductory materials

• Literary genres: an Introduction
• Reynolds and sensational suicides
• Works

The political novel

• “The Queen was the husband, and the Prince the wife” — Reynolds makes Queen Victoria a character in his novel
• “Behold the effects of its infamous Poor-Laws;—contemplate the results of the more atrocious Game-Laws;—mark the consequences of the Corn-Laws.”
• The Black Chamber of the Post Office and spying on citizens

Sensation fiction

• The Many Careers of Ellen Monroe
• George Montague Greenwood, swindler, seducer, rapist, and all-around villain

The Newgate or crime novel

• Professional Beggars in London
• Working as a shill in an auction house
• “Let us begin with the beer” – Adulerating beer, gin, run, wine, and port
• Prostituting girls ten and twelve years old
• G.W.M. Reynolds and Fiction about Crime in India

The novel of social protest

• Reynolds’s Opposition to Capital Punishment
• Reynolds’s Opposition to Imprisonment for Debt
• “Obscene jokes and filthy expressions. . . [at] the very foot of the gallows” — Reynolds on the corrupting effect of public executions
• “That rotatory engine of diabolical torture” – The Tread-Wheel in Coldbath Field’s Prison
• “The greatest possible quantity of corpses into the smallest space” — Reynolds on early Victorian cemeteries
• Food falsely measured, adulterated, and contaminated

Romance novels

• The beautiful women in The Mysteries of London
• The Condemned Man's Nightmares — Bill Bolter the night before his execution

Slum fiction

• London slums: West Street (Smithfield), Field Lane, and Saffron Hill, London

Verses

• “The Compassionate Lady and the Chimney Sweep”
• “The Last Oath”

Last modified 28 September 2021